Abstract

If everyone lived in the same way as we do in the West we would need
three whole planets like earth to fuel our habits. You don’t have to be
a genius to work out that our lifestyle is not sustainable. But it is seduc-
tively easy to ignore. Or at least it is if you have an abundance of food
in your refrigerator and live in a heated or air-conditioned house full
of plentiful clean water, electricity, gas, umpteen gadgets and an enor-
mous amount of stuff to cushion your life. It is rather more difficult to
ignore if you are unsure where your next meal will come from, if
changing weather patterns mean your crops have failed or been washed
away for the third year running, or if you do not have transport to get
to the weekly clinic in the village 20 kilometres away along a dirt track.
Some of us (mostly the sixth of the global population who live in the
high-income countries of Europe and North America) are taking more
than our fair share of the cake: so much that we are wolfing down most
of the cake and actually making ourselves ill in the process. And not
just metaphorically. There are now over 1,000 million overweight
people in the world, with consequently diminished lifestyles, increased
health problems and shortened lives. Yet, shockingly, there are also over
850 million undernourished people living on this same small planet
and famine is a major factor in the annual deaths of 6 million children
under five years of age.